Search form

Just as we were getting used to our Peabody success, we learned we won a Webby Award — yes, the “Oscars of the Internet” — for our site. Our fellow nominees included some heavyweights we think highly of: BBC Religion & Ethics, NPR’s This I Believe, Beliefnet, and Faith & Values Media’s Youthroots (our former underwriter).

There’s electricity in the air and Kate won’t stop buying food, everything from bagels and five tubs of cream cheese to yogurt-covered pretzels and cinnamon gummy sombreros. She said she would eat her hat if we won both awards in the same year… and so she did. ;)

In 2005, we were the first public radio program to win a Webby. Back then, it was more of a one-man show trying to create and expand an online identity for a burgeoning radio program with unbelievable content and an unrepresentative site: small images, swooping lines, baroque hues of gold and red with a visiomaticized (great term from Tufte) navigation scheme (Would you like to see a snapshot?). My intent was to defy those uninformed stereotypes, break the rules on image size and quality, bring a human perspective, and create content that paralleled the depth people were hearing on the radio.

In 2008, we have a different story to tell. The staff mindset has shifted and stepped up in unbelievable ways and contributed significantly to the effort — through blog posts, writing particulars, producing multimedia elements, etc. — a true group effort:

Krista writes a weekly essay exclusively for online use and even blogs on occasion. (I’m working on this busy professional to post more with less, but she always has so much to say that’s worthwhile.)

Kate is a blogging wunderkind who’s armed with an iPhone. She’s got the camera mastered. Now we need to put her vocabulary arsenal and vivacious sass to work and begin “tweeting/twittering” (look for that later this year *fingers crossed*).

Shiraz and Rob are relatively new staff members, but these young whippersnappers (How old am I?) have already posted some incredible material. Shiraz blogs the news, religious conventions, and sci-fi like nobody’s business — not to mention recently producing a wonderful audio slideshow of black belts mastering acts of kindness in the ultimate test of skill. Rob is the Cliff Clavin of SOF. He has an uncanny ability to take disparate facts and little-known trivia and weave meaningful blog posts (cue entries on Mr. Rogers and the personality of numbers) and interesting anecdotes in each week’s annotated guide to the program.

Andy, the latest staffing addition. He’s only been on staff six weeks but has had a major impact in subtle and dramatic ways. He’s finally got our free transcripts to print within the margins — important indeed — and coded a dynamic mapping application that gives voice to hundreds of Catholic stories that would have otherwise been silenced in a database. It continues to grow.

Honestly, we didn’t think we would win. We appreciate that our graphic design and navigation paired with our content was recognized as something special. Hoka-hey!

*UPDATE: Seki reminded me in the comments section about an idea we had. The beauty of the Webby Awards is that each winner can give a speech no longer than five words. I botched it last time, so I’m counting on you to make us look good, clever, intelligent… Add a comment to this post and the staff will select one of your suggestions to be spoken loud and proud at the Webby Gala on June 10 in NYC. This should be good.

seki -- thanks for reminding me that I wanted to call out to our listeners and readers for their five words. Last time, I totally choked... and uttered six words (oh, the shame!): "Support your local public radio station." What have you got for us?

I'm going to update this post and write a new entry calling out for your best shots. Muchos gracias.

Hey all at SOF, congratulations! I got a few folk from this side of the Atlantic to vote too. Devoted BBC listeners all of us, we nonetheless abandoned local radio (for me BBC 4) for better Radio (SoF)... You deserve it all... hope the celebrations are mighty! Pádraig (Belfast, N. Ireland)

Thanks for the kudos and the petitioning. Although we came up short in the vote for the People's Voice Webby, the judging panel (even David Bowie) recognized our work. As you may know, Krista is a huge fan of the BBC (lots of radio dramas methinks) and I tend to steer more toward their forward-thinking, experimental online initiatives. They have some great blogs about their work.

You said there is a tradition of 5 word acceptance speeches, and asked for suggestions. I have been reading "the Power Of Babel" by John McWhorter, a delightful book about linguistics, and according to the book, there are several languages that pack an entire phrase into one word. Hungarian and Finnish have this property, and there are a few others, but the Inuit languages are the champs. They could pack a whole paragraph into 5 words.

So that's my suggestion, translate it into Inuit!

Here's an example from Wikipedia

tusaatsiarunnanngittualuujungaI can't hear very well.

This long word is composed of a root word tusaa- - to hear - followed by five suffixes:

I'm not interested in winning anything (or, at least, not Everything), so I figured I'd put in this (although I had to do some brutal pruning to get it down to five words, so its probably not eligible ... [enough, Ambrose]. OK.